A 50th anniversary calendar, featuring Indigenous community leaders and a short DVD on the history of the Indigenous vote, have been specially developed to promote enrolment and voting. The DVD also features interviews with Indigenous Australians on the importance of the vote and will be broadcast on Indigenous media.

A group of young Indigenous Australians will participate in a Youth Parliament, after a week-long leadership program, and will be encouraged to take the message to their communities about enrolling and voting.

Despite Indigenous Australians achieving equality in the electoral process, today less than 50 per cent are enrolled to vote. Indigenous Australians are also more likely to vote informally than non-Indigenous Australians.

This means Indigenous Australians are missing out on the opportunity to fully participate in the democratic process and hold governments to account.

Quick facts

Before Europeans settled Australia in 1788, Indigenous law came from tradition. British settlement replaced Indigenous law with British law.

From 1850, Australian colonies made laws about who could vote. Queensland and Western Australian laws specifically prevented Indigenous people from voting. South Australia gave all adults, including Indigenous adults, the right to vote.

The Commonwealth specifically excluded 'any aboriginal native' of Australia from voting unless they were on the roll of an Australian colony before 1901. This meant that Indigenous people who turned 21 years (eligible voting age) after 1901 were denied voting rights.

In 1949, the Commonwealth Parliament granted the right to vote in federal elections to Indigenous people who had completed military service or who already had the right to vote in their state.

In 1962, Indigenous people achieved the right to vote in federal elections. It was not compulsory to enrol but once enrolled it was compulsory to vote.

This allowed Indigenous people to vote in the 1967 referendum, which amended the Constitution to give the Commonwealth the power to count Indigenous people in the census and make special laws for their benefit.

In 1984, Indigenous Australians finally achieved equal electoral status when Commonwealth law was changed to apply compulsory enrolment to "all Australian citizens".

What does the Indigenous Electoral Participation Program do?

The IEPP was established to close the gap in Indigenous disadvantage in electoral participation.

The four objectives of the IEPP are:

to increase levels of knowledge of democratic and electoral processes

to increase levels of enrolment

to increase levels of participation in democratic and electoral processes

to decrease levels of informal voting.

Components of the program are:

face-to-face education delivered by field staff

school, TAFE and community visits

prison visits

sponsorship for community activity

future leaders program

ambassador program

a program to increase and support Indigenous employment within the organisation.

The program began in April 2010 and is funded as part of the Government's Closing the Gap initiatives.